While the nation was preoccupied celebrating the holidays and welcoming a new year, two disturbing news articles—reiterating what Judicial Watch has reported for years—shed additional light on the critical situation in the southern border region. The first, an investigative piece by one of the country’s largest newspapers, documents how hundreds of employees and contract workers at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have taken millions of dollars in bribes to let drugs and illegal immigrants into the United States. A few days later the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) is cited in a Texas news report confirming that El Paso, long known as America’s “safest city,” is a major corridor for Mexican cartels smuggling drugs into the U.S.

For more than a decade Judicial Watch has exposed the pervasive corruption among DHS agents charged with protecting the U.S-Mexico border. They include Border Patrol officers accepting bribes to help transport illegal immigrants and contraband into the U.S. and DHS employees from various agencies collaborating with Mexican smuggling operations to allow drugs, weapons and possibly terrorists into the country. A few years ago, two veteran Border Patrol agents got convicted for operating a multi-million-dollar human smuggling business in which illegal aliens were transported into the U.S. in government vehicles. In 2013 two officials assigned to crack down on corruption at DHS got indicted for ordering the falsification of records—including active criminal probes—to obstruct an investigation into crooked federal agents suspected of participating in the illegal smuggling of undocumented aliens and/or narcotics into the United States.

The problem has gotten much worse, according to the investigative news story published a few days ago. Reporters analyzed thousands of court records and internal agency documents that show that in the last decade nearly 200 DHS employees and contract workers have accepted nearly $15 million in bribes while getting paid to protect the nation’s borders and enforce immigration laws. From the article: “These employees have looked the other way as tons of drugs and thousands of undocumented immigrants were smuggled into the United States, the records show. They have illegally sold green cards and other immigration documents, have entered law enforcement databases and given sensitive information to drug cartels. In one case, the information was used to arrange the attempted murder of an informant.” Keep in mind that DHS is the monstrous agency created after 9/11 to protect the nation from another terrorist attack so this information is extremely troublesome.

Corrupt DHS agents may have also contributed to the DEA’s distressing revelation that El Paso is a major corridor for Mexican drug traffickers. Judicial Watch has long reported this as part of an ongoing investigation into the dangerously porous southern border. The DEA’s recognition a few days ago, is among the first public confirmations by a government agency that the region is a key route for drugs that get disbursed throughout the country. El Paso is a major stop on the trade route for the Mexican drug cartels moving their product, the news report states, citing a DEA agent. “The drugs get smuggled into in this area and then transshipped to places like Chicago, Indianapolis, New York, Boston where there is a big user market,” according to the DEA special agent in charge of the El Paso sector. The special agent confirmed that “the biggest criminal drug threat is still the Mexican cartels.”

This has been well documented over the years in a variety of government audits and, more recently, as part of a broad Judicial Watch investigation into cartels, corruption and terrorism on the Mexican border. Drugs aren’t the only thing being smuggled in through El Paso. Islamic terrorists are also making into the U.S. with the help of Mexican drug cartels and ISIS has a training cell just a few miles from El Paso in an area known as “Anapra” situated just west of Ciudad Juárez in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. In 2014 Judicial Watch exposed a sophisticated narco-terror ring, operated by two of the FBI’s most wanted, with roots and financing in El Paso, illustrating that the area is a hotbed of crime despite being promoted as one of America’s safest cities.